Cervical mucus: why, when, how much, and who cares | Ep. 28

#27. Have you ever noticed a pattern in your cervical mucus? The white or clear liquid that gathers in your undies throughout the month. This episode walks you through what cervical mucus is, why you have it, what it does, and what it can reveal to you about where you're at in your menstrual cycle.

This episode is for you if:
- You're trying to conceive, and want to understand what your cervical mucus says about your fertile window
- You want to avoid pregnancy, and therefore want to understand when your fertile window is
- You have a cervix and wonder why she does what she does

Click here to go to the episode transcript at bridgetwalton.com/podcast/27

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Chapters

• 0:07 Understanding Cervical Mucus in Menstruators
• 14:30 Community Growth and Appreciation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unrelief menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? On today's episode, we are going to be talking about cervical mucus. What is it? Why do we have it? How does it change throughout our cycles? We'll talk about how you can use cervical mucus and your observations of it as a good indicator for you about when you are in your fertile window or when you aren't. If you are somebody who has a cervix, then this episode today and what we talk about, I think it's going to be really relevant to you. If you have any questions, if you have any comments about anything I talk about today, you can always connect with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton, and I'm starting to share more and more information over there. Check me out and I would love to connect. If you are just listening today for the first time, then I want to say welcome and I'm really glad that you found me here. If you've listened to I'm Hormonal before, then I'm really glad that you are back.

Speaker 1: 1:34

I started this podcast last year because I just think it's so important to share the information that I know and that we all collectively know about our hormone health, how to support our hormone health and, ultimately, how to live and feel our best in our menstruating bodies. So that's what we're here to do. One thing I always need to mention before we get into the details is that the information I share with you today is for educational purposes only. Please don't use it as a replacement for any sort of one-on-one support from a certified practitioner or from your healthcare provider. Now, that being said, if you do have interest in working one-on-one, then you can always reach out to me or you can go to BridgetWaltoncom slash coaching and learn more about how we can work together. If you want to move on to the next step, then you can always set up a free consultation call with me, where we can chat about what's going on with you and figure out if coaching is going to help get you to where you want to be With all of that out of the way, let's get into cervical mucus, and I want to kick it off with a quick story time.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Let's time travel back to when your girl was in seventh grade at Oakview Middle School and we were learning in my science class about reproductive systems and we all had the opportunity to write in a question that our teacher would answer for us if you wanted to just anonymously ask a question and somebody in my class one of the girls in my class had written in the question does discharge ever stop? And my teacher answered the question, or tried to answer the question, but he was really just talking about periods. Even today, or 18 years later, I'm remembering that he didn't quite understand the question about cervical mucus because he just talked about periods. And anyway, now that it's been a decade and a half, I'm excited to say that I think I know the answer and that's what I'm going to share with you today.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Cervical mucus is mucus or liquid that is produced in your you guessed it cervix and the purpose of it is to help facilitate a healthy conception and healthy start to your pregnancy. It's generally clear or white and it can be watery, thin. It'll change throughout your cycle depending on what your estrogen levels are looking like and sometimes it might be really watery It'll transition to being more creamy, and at your most fertile time of your cycle, it will be more like an egg yolk. So if you've ever had really, really stretchy cervical mucus, then that's a good indicator that you're in your fertile window and that you're about to ovulate. But, like I alluded to a second ago, all of your cervical mucus changes are deriving from changes in your estrogen levels, so we'll look at how they change throughout each phase.

Speaker 1: 4:37

What I want to look at really quick, though, is what cervical mucus is not, and so cervical mucus and vaginal discharge while may look similar when you're sitting on the toilet looking down to your underwear, they are a little bit different. So what vaginal discharges could be? Just normal cellular slough that comes off from your vagina? Right, your vagina is self-cleaning, and there are always going to be cells that it's shedding. It also could be just normal cell shedding from your cervix or other parts of your vaginal cavity. Another thing, though, that you want to keep in mind is that, if you are seeing something that is yellow or green, if you have some type of discharge that is gray or clumpy or has a foul smell, then not cervical mucus and probably is worth investigating more because that could be an infection, like whether it's BV, yeast infection or another STI. So I'll just say that one more time Yellow, green, gray, clumpy, stinky. That's going to be a signal to you that something is off balance and there's worth more investigating.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Another note that I want to mention is that if you are not cycling, right, if you're not going through the whole menstrual cycle and actually ovulating, and so if you're on hormonal birth control most kinds, this will apply to you You'll notice that you have a more consistent discharge throughout the month and it might be a little bit more thick. And that's because, again, depending on what kind of birth control you're using, sometimes there are setups so that they help to thicken your cervical mucus in order to prevent sperm from getting through. So, while that's not helpful in observing what's going on down there, makes total sense, right, if you're using birth control to not get pregnant or for another reason. But that's what's going on there, and so you will see a more consistent, thick, kind of discharge that does not fluctuate with your cycle. Now that we know more about what cervical mucus is and what it isn't. Let's come back to the start of our cycles. So day one of the menstrual cycle, estrogen is low. You're not having any cervical mucus, which you may know, because you're just bleeding generally on the first day of your period. But as you move into the follicular phase, your estrogen levels are rising and that's going to result in more wet or liquid, stretchy cervical mucus.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Now your cervical mucus has three different jobs, which is actually pretty cool, or three roles maybe is a better word for it. So the first thing it's going to do is help to nourish and shuttle sperm safely towards an egg or your egg. It's also going to help to actually bring the sperm into the uterus and it can help to kind of weed out what are the bad sperm that you would not want to fertilize your egg, which is a super cool, smart cervical mucus. Thank you, cervical mucus, for getting those duds out of there. But yeah, so and these three different kinds of cervical mucus? You can't see that they're different. I'll look the same to you, but just kind of like an FYI fun fact that there are three different kinds, each with their own job.

Speaker 1: 8:04

So let's come back to this part where cervical mucus helps to nourish sperm. And what does that actually mean for us? Well, if our cervical mucus is designed to keep that sperm alive and well, then that's going to elongate our fertile window. So if you're ovulating on, for example, day 14 of your cycle and you're starting to produce cervical mucus for the five or six days beforehand, then that's a good indication that, hey, I'm in my fertile window and, even though I'm not going to be ovulating till next week or however long away five days away that you can still keep that sperm sustained inside your body to ultimately lead to fertilization. So, hopefully by now you know the myth of being able to get pregnant every day of the month Absolutely not true, just 100% mythical. But there is a slightly larger window. It doesn't have to just be having sex on the day that you ovulate.

Speaker 1: 9:02

The other thing I want to point out here is that if you are somebody who is trying to conceive, then keep in mind that having sex on those days leading up to your day of ovulation is going to also be a good idea, instead of just only planning for one day. If you're someone who's trying to conceive, then you're probably tracking what your cervical mucus is like and how it changes, or if you're not, then this is something good to consider. But just remember that it cannot predict ovulation. Just by tracking these changes you can't say for sure like, oh, I for sure am going to ovulate in five days or whatever your pattern is, because you can always have fertile cervical mucus or indications of fertile cervical mucus. But then maybe you're really stressed or you get sick or just something totally normal happens and you don't happen to ovulate that month, and that's okay. But just something to note about using your cervical mucus as an indicator for where you're at in your cycle. One final note here to really just drive home the point when your cervical mucus is more thin, slippery or fluid, that's the indicator that you're in your fertile window, although it can be different for different people. Maybe you have a gyoke consistency cervical mucus every month and your best friend just doesn't have that, and that's okay. It's different for everybody.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Once you ovulate, your estrogen levels are going to drop pretty low or relative to how high they were for ovulation, and then during that second half of your cycle, the luteal phase, your estrogen levels will climb up a little bit, but not nearly as high as they were before ovulation, before going back down. So that's all to say that after you ovulate, you'll notice that your cervical mucus becomes more dry, right? So maybe that'll be creamy or sticky and then towards the end of your cycle, before your period starts again, you'll notice that it'll really just drop off. And one thing to note is that if you are noticing that you have what looks like fertile cervical mucus in your luteal phase, that could be a symptom or a sign for you that your estrogen levels are high compared to your progesterone levels, since, again, just to put the punctuation mark on this one your estrogen levels, or high estrogen levels specifically, is what is going to be driving that cervical mucus. So If you have fertile looking cervical mucus in that second half of your cycle and you're having other symptoms of estrogen dominance, like PMS or bloating or breast tenderness, then that can help you to put this constellation together of symptoms and be able to think okay, maybe estrogen dominance is what we're looking at.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Once your period begins, of course, the whole cycle begins again. You'll see the same pattern, and let's just go through that a little bit quicker from top to bottom, so you have a good takeaway of like okay, in each phase of my cycle, what should I be looking for. So here we go. During menstruation, you're not going to see any cervical mucus, and that would be approximately days one through five of your cycle. Now moving into the follicular phase, which is approximately days six to 12 of a standard kind of cycle, then, around day nine, you might start to see cervical mucus that's looking fertile.

Speaker 1: 12:32

During your ovulatory phase, that's when you will see the highest levels of cervical mucus, and so that'll be characteristically really fluid, more like egg white, I think. Earlier in the episode I said egg yolk, but I meant to say egg white. It'll be egg white, like watery and stretchy. Then, after you ovulate, you're in your luteal phase and you'll notice that your cervical mucus is really drying up, and if it is more wet, though, then you'll know that's a sign that your estrogen levels are relatively high compared to progesterone. If you use a cycle tracking app, you'll see that there are a lot of good prompts in there. Maybe not even a lot, but there are an appropriate number of prompts for you to select or describe what your cervical mucus looks like that day, and super good tool to get in sync with your body, understand what to expect and have a good gauge for your health, because, overall having ovulatory cycles. That is a good gauge for what your overall health is, and if you're not having regular ovulatory cycles, then that's definitely worth investigating to understand what the underlying cause is behind that.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Now, that being said, of course, if you're at a later stage of life, if you're in menopause, then that's a different story. But on that note, this ties it all back together from my seventh grade classmates question about does discharge ever stop? We will all always have the cellular sloughing that I mentioned. That'll happen for the rest of our lives as the vagina cleans itself and shreds some cells. But as you go through your life and move into menopause, you'll have a lot less discharge or cervical mucus because you're not ovulating anymore, because you don't have as high levels of estrogen as you did when you're young or when you're cycling or in perimenopause. So all these years later, that's the answer to my classmates question.

Speaker 1: 14:30

I hope you liked this shorty episode today and if you benefited from it, or if you know somebody who would like a friend or a sister, I would be so grateful if you had sent it over to her. I know that she would appreciate it and I would be really appreciative if you would help to grow the imhormonal community. If you have any symptoms that or you're not sure what your symptoms mean, go over to BrigitteWaltoncomcom and you can grab my download that has an overview of the five common symptoms of hormonal imbalance, what they mean and what you can do to start addressing them. That's it for today and let me just say thank you again because I'm so grateful for you guys.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Listening Like this would be obviously just pointless to do and pointless to put together if nobody was listening to it, but I've been really, really surprised to see how wide of a reach Folks have been listening from across like five different continents and, as I'm recording this in March of 2024, just last week hit the 1000th download. So obviously you couldn't have done it without all of you listening, and I just really want to say thank you so much and especially thank you to those of you who stuck around to all the way here at the end of this episode, let me know how I can be helpful for you and I will see you here next week when you could become impregnated, because if you have intercourse and that sperm is staying s-stain saying wow, staying s-stain, wow.